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Saudi Arabia Is Underwriting Terrorism. Let’s Start Making It Pay.

We don’t know yet what happened to San Bernardino shooter Tashfeen Malik during her many years living in Saudi Arabia, or what her U.S.-born husband and accomplice, Syed Farook, might have experienced during his two recent visits to the country. But it isn’t news that Saudi Arabia, a supposed U.S. ally, has a long record of promoting religious extremism at home and exporting it abroad. According to a Reuters report, relatives of the Pakistani-born Malik say she and her father appeared to have become more radicalized during years they spent in Saudi Arabia. Between 1,500 and 2,500 Saudis have joined the fighting in Iraq and Syria in part thanks to the close relationship between the ideology of the Islamic State and of Saudi Wahabism. In the last month alone, Saudi Arabia has declared its intent to behead 50 people across the country and has threatened legal action against any who suggest beheading is “ISIS-like.”

For years since 9/11, U.S. and Western officials have mostly looked the other way at all this ideological support for extremism: Saudi oil was just too important to the global economy, even though many of these Saudi petro-dollars were underwriting repression at home and the growth of Salafist fundamentalism abroad. But today, two things have changed: first, the global cost of Saudi-backed extremism has continued to climb—with the rise of ISIS and Boko Haram, the bombings in Beirut and Paris and the shootings in San Bernardino.

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The other factor that has changed is that there is no longer as much economic justification for America to kowtow to the Saudi regime. With Saudi Arabian dominance of the global oil market declining, and the United States moving itself closer to energy independence—and the deal to halt Iranian nuclear weapons technology moving ahead, neutralizing for the moment at least the threat of a Mideast arms race—there has never been a better time to reconsider America’s close relationship with the House of Saud. That means moving toward a regime of sanctions designed to pressure the ruling royal family toward respecting rights at home and peace abroad. Other major nations appear to be recognizing the same thing: “We have to make clear to the Saudis that the time of looking away is over,” Sigmar Gabriel, German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s deputy, told Bild am Sonntag newspaper on Sunday.

It’s long past time, in other words, to make Saudi Arabia pay for its ideological support of extremism. The United States should be pressuring Saudi Arabia to reform and—if necessary—move on to targeted sanctions modeled on those the United States has applied to Russia, Zimbabwe and Venezuela. Such sanctions block the sale or transfer of money, goods or services owned by specifically named individuals, and prevent those named from entering the United States.

Saudi Arabia, of course, denies that it is involved in underwriting extremism; it maintains, on the contrary, that it is part of the coalition against Islamic State and it has been a victim of extremist terror attacks. But the record of Saudi Arabia’s global support for extremists suggests it should be on the shortlist for inclusion on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list, at the least. Both the government and individuals within the country have been a major source of support for international terror groups before and since 2001—when most of the 9/11 bombers came from Saudi Arabia. In 2012, the Saudi ambassador to Pakistan had multiple high-level contacts with the Haqqani network, which was behind a 2011 attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. In 2009, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Saudi donors were the “most significant source of foreign funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide,” and that Al Qaeda and the Taliban “probably raised millions of dollars” in the country every year.

This support for radicalism abroad should come as little surprise given that Islamic State is an ideological cousin of Saudi Arabia’s own state-sponsored extremist Wahhabi sect—which the country has spent more than $10 billion to promote worldwide through charitable organizations like the World Assembly of Muslim Youth. The country will continue to export extremism as long as it practices the same policies at home.

In fact, the country’s domestic human rights abuses are enough reason to impose sanctions alone. Venezuela is under U.S. sanctions at the moment for “erosion of human rights guarantees, persecution of political opponents, curtailment of press freedoms, use of violence and human rights violations.” It might be shorter to list the human rights Saudi Arabia upholds than those it abuses. To quote the U.S. State Department Human Rights Report, Saudi “citizens lack ... the right and legal means to change their government” while there are “pervasive restrictions on universal rights such as freedom of expression, including on the internet, and freedom of assembly, association, movement, and religion; and a lack of equal rights for women, children, and noncitizen workers... torture and other abuses... [v]iolence against women, trafficking in persons, and discrimination based on gender, religion, sect, race, and ethnicity.”

Beyond the floggings and beheadings meted out to those who dare suggest reform, Saudi Arabia’s record on women is a sick form of gender apartheid. They are banned from obtaining a passport, marrying, traveling or going to college without the approval of their husband or other male guardian. None may drive and they are also banned from most jobs. And the treatment of blogger Raif Badawi, who was sentenced to 10 years in jail and 1,000 lashes for suggesting the country embrace women’s rights and freedom of thought, demonstrates a determined commitment to curtail press freedom. Meanwhile, Zimbabwe is sanctioned because certain persons have been “undermining democratic institutions or processes.” It would be hard to do that in Saudi Arabia, but only because there is so little to undermine.

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Yet we haven’t really even started this discussion about Saudi Arabia in America. Indeed, the United States is still deeply implicated in Saudi Arabia’s abuses. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the U.S. exported $934 million in arms to Saudi Arabia from 2005 to 2009. From 2010 to 2014, it exported $2.4 billion more. This month, it approved another billion-dollar shipment. The U.S. provides training, shares intelligence and gives logistics support to Saudi Arabia’s military. And President Barack Obama rushed to Riyadh to pay obeisance to the country’s new king, Salman, early in 2015, only days after the death of his predecessor, Abdullah.

Many observers still suggest Saudi Arabia and its oil is simply too important to U.S. interests to countenance a change in policy. But that is based on a dated view of both the country’s economic power and the impact of sanctions. Imposing an embargo on Saudi oil exports like the one imposed against Iran for its nuclear program would surely have a dramatic effect on global oil prices at least in the short term. But targeted sanctions would not do that. And, regardless, Saudi Arabia’s power over global—and in particular U.S.—energy markets is on the wane.